


So Much Beyond

by nanda (nandamai)



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Manipulation, Episode Tag, Episode: s05e01 Night, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-04-01
Updated: 1999-04-01
Packaged: 2017-11-15 16:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nandamai/pseuds/nanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little emotional blackmail goes a long way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Much Beyond

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place just after Night (though the thing about the Malon is a wild guess).

She appears at my door as I knew she would. It’s late, but I’ve only just returned from a five-hour meeting with the Malon ambassador. After finding our way back to inhabited space, our first priority had been to contact Emck’s home world and offer them our solution to their toxic waste problem. They won’t accept. Officially we’re still negotiating, but I’m sure they won’t. Better to pollute the universe than to alter the economy, it seems.

Only B’Elanna and I, with two of Tuvok’s security guards, went down to the surface. I was glad. Kathryn was not at the top of the list of people I wanted to see. I told her I’d report at our morning briefing, but I knew I’d see her before that.

I’ve barely collapsed on my sofa when the door chimes. I sigh. It has been a long, long day. A long two months. A long four years.

“Come in, Captain.”

She doesn’t ask how I knew it was her. She lets the door shut and leans back against it, arms crossed.

Oh yes, the old Kathryn is back, if I had any doubt after that scene on the bridge. This is not the self-pitying martyr with the liquid eyes who asked me yesterday if I was ready to captain this ship.

Her shoulders are straighter, her chin is higher, her skin is brighter, even her hair is bouncier. She’s always beautiful, but in this mood, she knows it. And the look in her eyes is pure Janeway: regal, predatorial, seductive, vulnerable, and angry all at once. That look portends trouble, or excruciating pleasure, depending on how honest I am with myself. And she knows damn well what that look will do to me, after fifty-five days when she would barely meet my eyes or deign to allow me in her quarters.

I let my head fall back on the couch. I don’t need to see her. I can feel her breathing from across the room.

“You led a mutiny against me.” Her voice is low and dangerous and it vibrates in my ears.

Funny. I never noticed before that the ceiling isn’t one continuous panel. If I look closely enough I can see the seams.

“You don’t want to have this conversation right now, Kathryn.”

“Don’t I?”

I just look at her.

“Well?”

I’m too tired for this, and too angry. “What, Kathryn? You want me to explain myself?”

“I thought you might.”

God. She is the most impossible woman — no, the most impossible person — no, the most impossible being, corporeal or non — I have ever met, in any quadrant. Less than twenty-four hours ago, she tried to rope me into her suicide plan, with no doubt that I’d do whatever she asked. Now *she* wants *me* to explain myself?

And then, presumably, to make love with her.

Correction: I want to make love. She wants to fuck.

I lock my eyes on hers. “From where I stood, it looked like I saved your life — not that you wanted me to.”

She shifts her weight from one hip to the other, to hide a tiny flicker of surprise at my boldness.

“You disobeyed my orders and you dragged all the senior officers with you.”

Dragged? Hardly.

“You didn’t seem to mind much at the time. If I recall correctly, you were laughing when you realized I’d warned them.”

A weaker man would already be smoldering from that glare. “We’re not on the bridge anymore, Commander.”

“I noticed.” I look her up and down. “Would you like to come in, or would you rather argue from over there?”

She hesitates for just a second before nodding slightly, and walks over to where I’m slouching. I know I’ve taken her off guard. She curls her feet under her as she sits only inches away from me. I can smell her: that spicy, dry scent she wears in such minute amounts that almost anyone else would miss it.

It’s so simple: all she has to do to keep me in line is offer a touch, a smile, a candlelight dinner to remind me of the last time she let me touch her, or suggest that she might let me do it again. Whatever objections I may have had will die on my lips, replaced by the taste of her, filling my mouth in my memory. But not yet, not yet.

Her face is a little softer now, but not much, and not, I suspect, for long. “It was my decision to make, Chakotay. I don’t need you to undermine my authority.”

“The hell you don’t. Are you going to tell me you’d rather be in a shuttle back in that void than here on this ship? Bullshit, Kathryn.”

She eyes me as if she thinks I might have been taken over by a malevolent entity. I’m glad she’s not armed. “It was a perfectly workable plan. What if it had been the only solution? Would you still have tried to stop me?”

“It wasn’t the only solution. You hadn’t considered any other solutions. This was about your guilt, not the good of the ship and this crew.”

She opens her mouth to object but I won’t let her.

“Don’t,” I say. “You were wrong, Kathryn. What you did was unfair to all of us, including yourself, and you can’t cite any Starfleet regulations this time. You were out of line.”

Her eyes narrow and I can feel them singeing my hair. “I was what, Commander?”

Righteous indignation always makes her fall back on rank.

“Out of line. I don’t think anyone back at headquarters would disagree with me, either.”

“Then they can prosecute us both. How convenient.”

The words slip from her lips like honey, but it’s honey with an edge sharp enough to slice into my veins. Blue tongues of fire seem to leap between us.

I find myself looming over her, waving a finger in her face. She doesn’t even flinch. “Don’t you ever, *ever* put me in that position again. I will be your dutiful first officer, I’ll take myself down to the brig for losing my temper, I’ll kiss your feet on the bridge if that’s what you want. But you have *no* right to ask me to help you get yourself killed so you can find redemption. Not as my captain, and not as …”

I listen as my own words trail off.

Not as what, exactly?

Friend hardly seems appropriate lately, and lover would be a cruel joke on myself. Woman I sleep with because I’m desperately in love, even though I know that every time she uses me it destroys us both — not to mention any chance we’ll ever have at a normal, healthy, adult relationship?

She watches as my thoughts roll over my face.

“Chakotay…”

The slightest tremble in her voice is all it takes to burn the last of the steam out of my anger.

I make her out to be a demon when I’m angry, but she’s not. If she were, I wouldn’t be in love with her.

If she were, I might be able to turn her away.

I close my eyes, blocking out the sight of her, but I can’t block my four other senses, or my memory.

I knew how it would be at the very beginning. She would take, and I would give. I accepted that from the minute I agreed to serve on her ship. I accepted it again when I fell in love with her, and again the first time she let me undress her — standing above me, coolly watching while I worshipped her with kisses on pale skin.

How she can convince herself that a relationship would break protocol and this doesn’t is beyond me, but then there’s so much of her that is beyond me.

God, I love her. I hate her. I hate myself for loving her so much.

She shifts on the sofa, the heat from her body seeping into mine.

I let my head fall back again, and cover my eyes with my hands. The light in my quarters has suddenly become too bright. My eyelids have turned to parchment and I’m drowning in her before she’s even touched me.

She lays one small, strong hand on my thigh, and I’m lost.

***

She stays until morning this time — unusual, but not unprecedented. She’s never let me sleep in her bed, but she does sometimes sleep in mine.

If I had any willpower at all when it comes to Kathryn Janeway, I’d kick her out. To me, sleeping together has always been more intimate than sex: every time she falls asleep in my arms I fall more in love with her. Every time, it becomes that much easier to believe that she could fall, is falling, has already fallen but doesn’t dare admit it to herself.

So I don’t kick her out. Instead I bury my nose in her hair and let her scent fuel my dreams, beause I never know when she’ll let me touch her again. 


End file.
